MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Support for families can’t be limitless

Child Benefit is a relic of a much older welfare system. It began almost 60 years ago as the ‘Family Allowance’, designed to cope with the steep fall in household income when the first child was born, because the mother in those days invariably ceased to go out to work.

Now, in an age of ever more complex tax credits, when most young mothers hurry back into their workplaces, it is simply a flat-rate subsidy for those who choose to have children. State help for childcare costs is probably more politically sensitive. That could be why there was less fuss than expected when Child Benefit was recently withdrawn from higher-income households. Even some of the losers saw the justice in the change.

Now a Downing Street adviser, Nadhim Zahawi MP, is floating a plan to limit all such subsidies to the first two children in any family. The change would not affect existing recipients – only future ones.

He calculates that it would deliver a steadily increasing bonus to taxpayers over the years to come. There are difficulties. Labour’s unscrupulous propagandists could portray it as a ‘Tax on Families’. Members of faiths that encourage large families could argue that it discriminated against them. But in a free society, it is reasonable to expect people to take responsible choices on such matters. Young couples embarking on family life obviously need some help.

But it should not be limitless. The question is how and where the limits should be set. Mr Zahawi’s proposal deserves a fair hearing and detailed consideration.

Go green – get rich

Critics of Green orthodoxy are often dismissed by the climate change lobby as being in the pay of the oil companies, and therefore not worth listening to.

In most cases, these charges are baseless. But what of the eco-warriors themselves? Whose pockets are they in? Today The Mail on Sunday shows that many of the most influential campaigners for renewable energy have sizeable personal stakes in the lucrative subsidised industries that benefit from the policies they pursue.

High stakes: Campaigners for renewable energy have stakes in lucrative industries

This would be bad enough in itself. But what makes it worse is that the money which flows into these zealots’ wallets does not come from free-standing profitable business, whose consumers can choose whether or not they buy its products. It is the fruit of gigantic subsidies, financed by taxpayers and consumers who have no choice in the matter. So ordinary citizens are helping to pay for noisy and intolerant campaigns that drown out reasonable doubts about the costly rush to green energy. This is self-evidently unfair.

A more balanced debate on this issue is badly needed, but it will not take place while millions are forced to pay for the propaganda of only one side.

A chilly audience

The mystery of the Queen’s relationship with Lady Thatcher continues to fascinate millions. Loyal Tories hope it was mutually respectful. Left-wingers hope it was bumpy and chilly, as recently portrayed by Helen Mirren and Haydn Gwynne in a successful stage play.

We may never know all, but fascinating details unearthed by this newspaper through Freedom of Information suggest that it may, in fact, have been more awkward than the official version suggests.

Even when asked to ‘dine and sleep’ at Windsor, an invitation for which most people would drop everything, the Thatchers negotiated over dates.